Are You Actually Still Sold on Snowden?

The other day I wrote that Snowden is a glaring liability in the hands of the Chinese, a loaded weapon in the last place we want it, that he presumably knows a lot more than he’s already revealed and he’s likely to reveal much more. And whatever it is that he reveals, whether you find it heroic of him or not, his doing so, whether voluntarily or from coercion, would be hurtful to our national security and diplomatic interests. Therefore, I wrote, we need to make him unavailable to the Chinese one way or another. I was called weak-minded for this, identified as being exactly what is wrong with this country and I cost us at least one loyal reader as a result of my calling for murder on an American hero (I had tried to massage the language, but yes, that’s basically what I did say).

Snowden just surfaced with statements to the South China Morning Post, claiming Snowden has documents implicating the US government in a cyber warfare offensive against both Hong Kong and mainland China, among other nations, including private citizens, universities, their government officials, pretty much everyone there and in the world due to our “hacking network backbones – like huge Internet routers that give us access to the communications of thousands of computers without having to hack every single one.” Snowden clarified his intentions of picking China as his vacation spot: “I am not here to hide from justice; I am here to reveal criminality.” “I have had many opportunities to flee Hong Kong, but I would rather stay and fight the United States government in the courts, because I have faith in [China and] Hong Kong’s rule of law.”

So, Snowden is apparently not in Ecuador or Iceland but because he is a Chinese sympathizer, a nation with whom he has unfinished business, he’s turning himself into a pop icon in China and is gaining support, he sees his interests as congruent to those of the Chinese, and is acting in a manner one would in his shoes to curry favor with the Chinese and at the expense of the US, bit by bit to the media, fast enough to keep the world’s attention but slow enough to make the moment last, like Wikileaks. He claims to the Chinese that he has documents supporting allegations. Maybe he has a couple more documents. He is not done releasing damaging information to the people who just stole our top secret weapons blueprints and gave more money, food and oil to that nation that looks forward to nuking us. Snowden is escalating, he’s like a firehose someone dropped that’s spitting out information and flapping wildly and dangerously everywhere. So let’s put a kink in that hose, if you know what I mean.

I get that most of you like the notion of him revealing to the world what he has revealed, you want everything’s he got left and admire him for doing it at such great expense. I know that some of you would like, in light of his revelations, everyone in high office cleared out and replaced, or perhaps the tough-minded among you (if I’m indeed the one who is weak-minded here) would like our government overthrown altogether with Snowden appointed as our Truth Czar. Yes? That said, do you still want our government to do nothing while Snowden buddies up with the Chinese and releases more secrets? Do you not only trust him to reveal what you regard as benign secrets that just show us as hypocritical as we’d deserve to be shown, but do you also trust your own assessment of this sort of risk to our nation? C’mon.

Doug Simmons